The First Step Toward Change
Posted by Eric Welch on Mar 27th 2025
Evolving was something I needed to do.
If I was serious about moving to LA—serious about Venice Beach, about the art, about chasing the west coast sun instead of just daydreaming about it—then I had to quit talking and start doing.
And the art pulling me west wasn’t just about acting, drawing, or painting. It was storytelling. Becoming somebody that people thought I wouldn’t be.
Problem was, I didn’t know shit about acting. Didn’t know where to start, how to break into it, or what kind of madness it took to stand under the lights and hold an audience.
So, I did what I always did when I was lost—found someone who knew to ask.
That’s when Carl came into my life. He’d just drifted back to Louisville from LA, packing stories, looking for fresh actors to break in his new play at Actors Theatre’s black box. I didn’t know what the fuck I was walking into, but since when did that ever stop me?
It was one of those Kentucky days where the air feels heavy—sticky, alive, like the whole city’s breathing down your neck. The Highlands was buzzing. People moving, music spilling out of storefronts, couples arguing and laughing in the same breath. I could feel it vibrating through me as I walked. I love being surrounded by so much life.
Day’s Coffee sat up ahead on Bardstown Road. My pulse was racing.
What the hell am I doing?
I wasn’t theatre. I wasn’t Shakespeare or black turtlenecks and cigarettes. I was baseball. I was blunt smoke and Cadillacs and basement grow rooms. Art and acting always lived in some parallel world I admired from a distance—but I never thought I’d cross into it. I was too scared to step into it. I was scared that when I wanted to do that high school play, my Dad would think I was gay. I wanted to make sure he was proud of me, so I stuck to baseball.
Sports made me strong in his eyes. Acting? Theatre? That was soft. Weak. Light in the loafers. Something he couldn’t square with toughness. And all my life I’d been trying to prove I wasn’t weak.
But here I was.
Front door of Day’s Coffee. Hand on the handle.
I walk in, scanning. Looking for someone who’s looking for me.
And then he’s there—a guy on the patio, short, scruffy beard, Star Trek shirt, jeans, warm smile. Not Hollywood, not intimidating. Just real.
He waves. “Hey! You Eric?”
“Yep,” I answer, trying to sound surer of myself than I felt.
“Let’s go outside.”
We sit, make small talk. I keep the hustle tucked away, careful to redirect when talk drifts too close. Then Carl pulls out a folded sheet of paper, smooths it out on the table.
“Okay,” he says. “Let’s do a cold read.”
I nod, pretending I know.
“You ever done one before?”
“Nope.”
“No worries,” he says, easy. “Cold read just means you hit it raw. First time. No practice. I want to see how you handle it in the moment.”
He points at my lines. “Here’s your character: respected church man, in love with your wife, vital to the congregation. But secretly—you seduce younger gay men, kidnap them, and bring them back for conversion therapy.”
I just blink at him. What the actual fuck?
It’s heavy. Twisted. And for some reason, my chest tightens with nerves and adrenaline all at once.
Carl just grins. “Whenever you’re ready.”
The café noise dissolves. It’s just me, the paper, and my own breath. I read. Stumbling at first, then pushing through, letting something inside me take over. I don’t know what I’m doing, but maybe that’s the point. It’s raw, it’s untrained, it’s mine.
By the end, Carl’s nodding like he already knew this was going to work. Or, he had no other options.
“You got it,” he says. “That’s the energy I want.”
I sit there, stunned. My first acting gig. A role in a play called The Time I Was Kidnapped By The Church.
Carl starts talking rehearsals, schedules, all the details of a life I’ve never lived. I’m listening but half in a daze. Because I can feel it—I just stepped across some invisible line, and there’s no going back.
Then my phone rings.
The number flashes on the screen. I know it. A sale. Money. The hustle.
And just like that, reality crashes back in. The two worlds colliding at the same table.
The man I was trying to grow into and the man I was still chained to.
I sat there, script in one hand, hustle buzzing in the other, caught between them both.
And maybe that’s what evolving feels like—not one clean break, but a tug of war of two passions.